Is a system of private ownership and non-aggression flawed? Yes, but not uniquely so. Whatever problems a libertarian world might face will also plague the non-libertarian alternative, but with far greater frequency, and with graver results. — Virgo Avalytikh
on the understanding that a world of peaceful voluntarism is a good and just world in which to live. — Virgo Avalytikh
The basic argument for liberty is that, in a system of private ownership, individual persons are generally best acquainted with their own situations, and are generally the immediate bearers of both the costs and the benefits of their own actions — Virgo Avalytikh
It follows that there is no reason to expect political actors to take the actions that maximise net-benefit for all.’ — Virgo Avalytikh
These are important problems (though, it is rather question-begging to prejudge them as 'incurable'), but, since they take us far afield from the topic of market failure, on which I have already written so much, I would sooner address them in a future thread, if it's all the same to you. — Virgo Avalytikh
I expect All of these questions to be taken seriously and addressed in full. — Noah Te Stroete
Maybe you're just accustomed to having things your own way, I don't know. But it's not unreasonable to expect some give-and-take here. There is plenty for you to be getting on with - I'm not sure what you are expecting of me, exactly. I suppose I could copy/paste material that is already easily accessible to you in the literature with which you are not familiar, but that doesn't help anybody in particular. You have raised, not so much challenges or problems for libertarianism, as much as queries about it, queries which are addressed in the material with which I have furnished you. In order to understand a position better, is the published work of its advocates not the first port of call? If, having become familiar with libertarianism, you have specific objections to its specific proposals, you are perfectly at liberty to start thread of your own. But, in the meantime, it seems as though the 'cowardice' only goes one way. The fact that you don't bother to deal with the substance of the argument I presented isn't even taken into account. — Virgo Avalytikh
http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf
For more detailed discussions of property rights and how they are generated and allocated, especially in relation to criminality, the best treatment is Rothbard's:
https://mises-media.s3.amazonaws.com/The%20Ethics%20of%20Liberty_0.pdf — Virgo Avalytikh
Sound politically convenient. Yet is it really so simple?What is the cause of market failure? According to Friedman, it is caused by my taking an action such that the benefits go to me and the costs go to other people, or my not taking an action because the costs would go to me and the benefits would go to other people. — Virgo Avalytikh
You note quite rightly that I justify a presumption in favour of liberty only very briefly. The primary reason is that it is not the main subject I wanted to address, the argument being concerned primarily with market failure. Few people, it seems to me, would say openly of themselves that they are ‘anti-liberty’. Maybe I am wrong about this. But I think that there is a widespread intuition that a world in which individuals have a substantial measure of freedom to pursue their own interests and satisfy their wants is preferable to a world in which, say, most people have the trajectory of their lives dictated to them by others. That a world in which most people are free is preferable to one in which most people are enslaved is a proposition that I didn’t feel the need to justify at any length. Maybe a project for another time. Rather, most people are sceptical of libertarianism, not because they are ‘anti-liberty’ as such, but because they believe that a system of peaceful voluntarism faces limitations which only an alternative (such as coercive Statism or collective ownership) can overcome. This is the subject I sought to address. — Virgo Avalytikh
I am most acquainted with my own life, and therefore best situated to make the best decisions for myself. This is only a generalisation, but the generalisation holds. I am a better judge of my own affairs than I am of yours. No one should trust me with running their life for a day. An elegant argument for liberty on the basis of the nature of knowledge may be found in Friedrich Hayek’s essay, ‘The Use of Knowledge in Society’, which everybody in the world should read (twice). — Virgo Avalytikh
Now consider the private-property solution. Everybody, by some system or other (a topic for another day), has a piece of land, and is personally responsible for cultivating it. Someone who works the land to the full and gets the most out of it, (if he is permitted to keep what he produces) will receive the benefit from it, and therefore has a realistic incentive to be productive. — Virgo Avalytikh
As you point out, some people, perhaps many, might take it upon themselves to work for the common good, even at great cost to themselves. To which I would respond that, if such is the case, then there is no reason why this may not happen in a private-property system, too. We must have a fair and consistent standard, in our estimation of human nature. What one finds is that there is an excessive scepticism of human nature when it comes to considering the risks of private ownership, and an excessive optimism when considering the risks of collective ownership. — Virgo Avalytikh
I have argued that there ought to be a presumption in favour of liberty, where liberty is defined in terms of private ownership and the absence of aggression. There are good reasons to think that this general posture is one which makes us better off than the alternatives (namely, being aggressed against by a coercive institution, or being a negligible element in a much larger collective). From here, the argument is that, while peaceful voluntarism does exhibit certain limitations in terms of what it can easily achieve, which I have grouped together under the category of ‘market failure’, the alternatives to peaceful voluntarism are themselves subject to market failure, though with far greater frequency, and with fewer possibilities to overcome it. — Virgo Avalytikh
a system of private ownership and non-aggression — Virgo Avalytikh
Consider the so-called ‘tragedy of the commons’. There is common land, ownership of which is shared by the community as a whole. Because nobody is individually responsible for its upkeep, it goes to ruin. — Virgo Avalytikh
One basic problem with the theory of the free market is that even if it comes close to describing reality, it doesn't get the cigar. What the global markets are absolutely dominated are oligopolies and oligopolistic competition: thousands of smaller actors exist yes, but only ten or so large companies exist that simply dominate the market. Basically in every market there is. As libertarianism can be accredited to make good critique about state created monopolies and things as disasterous as centrally planned socialism, it hasn't in my view made such a compelling explanation how we get nearly in every market an oligopoly. — ssu
I purpose an a mind experiment: Let's assume a new of technology emerges and creates a new market, where every major actor in the market is an optimist and a believer in "the cause". This aggregate optimism will create a mania and the stock prices of this new industry will shoot to the moon...until even your old aunt has invested in the 'new thing' and there is nobody left to buy at such astronomical prices and hence the prices collapse bursting the 'speculative bubble'. The crash will be then seen as a market failure. — ssu
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